Foundations Updated 2026-09 View as Markdown

Basic String Operations

The shell allows some common string operations which can be very useful for script writing.

String Length#

shell

#       1234567890123456
STRING="this is a string"
echo ${#STRING}            # 16

Index#

Find the numerical position in $STRING of any single character in $SUBSTRING that matches. Note that the ‘expr’ command is used in this case.

shell

STRING="this is a string"
SUBSTRING="hat"
expr index "$STRING" "$SUBSTRING"     # 1 is the position of the first 't' in $STRING

Substring Extraction#

Extract substring of length $LEN from $STRING starting after position $POS. Note that first position is 0.

shell

STRING="this is a string"
POS=1
LEN=3
echo ${STRING:$POS:$LEN}   # his

If :$LEN is omitted, extract substring from $POS to end of line

shell

STRING="this is a string"
echo ${STRING:1}           # $STRING contents without leading character
echo ${STRING:12}          # ring

Simple data extraction example:#

shell

# Code to extract the First name from the data record
DATARECORD="last=Clifford,first=Johnny Boy,state=CA"
COMMA1=`expr index "$DATARECORD" ','`  # 14 position of first comma
CHOP1FIELD=${DATARECORD:$COMMA1}       #
COMMA2=`expr index "$CHOP1FIELD" ','`
LENGTH=`expr $COMMA2 - 6 - 1`
FIRSTNAME=${CHOP1FIELD:6:$LENGTH}      # Johnny Boy
echo $FIRSTNAME

Substring Replacement#

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"

Replace first occurrence of substring with replacement

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]/be/eat}        # to eat or not to be

Replace all occurrences of substring

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]//be/eat}        # to eat or not to eat

Delete all occurrences of substring (replace with empty string)

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]// not/}        # to be or to be

Replace occurrence of substring if at the beginning of $STRING

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]/#to be/eat now}    # eat now or not to be

Replace occurrence of substring if at the end of $STRING

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]/%be/eat}        # to be or not to eat

replace occurrence of substring with shell command output

shell

STRING="to be or not to be"
echo ${STRING[@]/%be/be on $(date +%Y-%m-%d)}    # to be or not to be on 2012-06-14

Exercise

Try it

run this one locally

Expected output

Warren Buffett said:
Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.
and I say:
Life is like a football. The important thing is getting wet

Solution

#!/bin/bash

BUFFETT="Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill."

    # write your code here
    ISAY=$BUFFETT
    change1=${ISAY[@]/snow/foot}
    change2=${change1[@]//snow/}
    change3=${change2[@]/finding/getting}
    loc=`expr index "$change3" 'w'`
    ISAY=${change3::$loc+2}

# Test code - do not modify

echo "Warren Buffett said:"
echo $BUFFETT
echo "and I say:"
echo "$ISAY"

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